Remember to remember

Making a relationship work is no easy feat, given men’s proclivity for forgetfulness.

I wish this were a topic as simple as the title makes it sound. A strong relationship is like a stable government, a distant possibility but never the present scenario. If we all had a drink for the number of times we have been in a relationship and summarised all the mistakes we made to ourselves only to go and commit the exact same ones the next time around, the world would be one giant drunken party!

It’s not as if the rules are not clear or that they change too often, or vary from partner to partner. It is pretty much a science, a mathematical formula that could possibly be used to yield precise results each time the variables are properly entered.

But there’s just one problem with this: none of us men ever seem to remember it. If we remember the science of it, we forget the data we need to input into it and if the raw information is what we recall, then the equation evades us.

In short, we are stuck in some cyclic Groundhog Day setup where we are given to committing the same errors each time around to end up as the bottom half of every relationship. Doesn’t mean that most men don’t try to get the upper hand, though. First there are the macho types who wish to assert their relevance in a twosome through means that can only be referred to as barbaric and those couplings are more a wrestling bout than a symbiotic union. Others try to appease the other party and this presents the disadvantage of becoming a slave of our own accord, serving an insatiable master.

Some others find an exploitable interest — traveling, books, cooking, movies a Mercedes Benz SLK — anything that will arouse the interest of the female of the species and keep them hooked till the next book launch, movie preview, or car model upgrade.

But the perfect relationship where a man has the default major part is one where he is less forgetful than the lady. And this, my friends, is something that doesn’t exist in the entire animal kingdom, let alone in us upright bipeds.

No matter how hard a man tries, he will always be reminded of his habit of forgetting which, although 90% of the time justifiably valid, can become a deadly weapon in her arsenal the remaining 10% of the time. These are the times when you certainly didn’t forget but given the precedence, the burden of proof rests with you and you feel obliged to allow her the sense of righteousness. In other words, the general malady of forgetfulness becomes a pretext to over-write even the remaining few cases where a man could have reclaimed some dignity.

Now I know that it is hard to make a case without proof but it is even harder to capture one’s entire day on HD video with Dolby audio to reproduce as proof in case of a disagreement. And even if you do manage to win the battle, it will only lead to an eternal sulk which would ultimately show you as the bigger loser in the ongoing war viz. a relationship.

Yes, I know a relationship isn’t a war and likening one to the other is flawed. But it’s the only other place where “all’s fair” and sometimes, just sometimes, when tempers are flaring and egos are battered, it becomes hard to remember that the only reason we are trying to bring down the person in front of us is because we truly madly and deeply love them. The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine